Tag: Daniel Kušan

I ran my first game of Monsterhearts yesterday and it was an absolute blast!

I ran my first game of Monsterhearts yesterday and it was an absolute blast!

It was a oneshot set in a boarding school in Scotland. I’d had a hard time getting very trad-oriented people in my local meetup group to understand the pbta style, but as soon as we started filling up the classroom chart, I knew it was going to be good!

The Werewolf was the star of the girls’ lacrosse team and ended up facing off a bunch of vampires after one of them killed a boy from their class. After that she went on a killing spree and was eventually calmed by the Mortal who was in love with her and they ended up in a serious relationship.

The Infernal, who fancied the boy killed by the vamp, sacrificed her best friend to the Loch Ness monster in order to get the boy back from the dead.

The Ghost, who was initially bullied by the most popular girl, went on to screw with her mind constantly and ended up possessing her body permanently.

The only gripe we had was that it was a oneshot. We had to wrap it up early but everyone said they wanted to play more of MH.

The game worked perfectly and I’m so happy right now because the experience was both very emotional and a lot of fun!

I’m making a World of Dungeons hack for one of my upcoming one-shots. It is straight up fantasy but with everything resembling D&D surgically removed, and then a bit of AW and Blades in the Dark mechanics added.

If you are interesting in this sort of thing, feel free to have a look and give feedback.

I just got an idea for a campaign. The working title is “Centuries”. The story would consists of four parts (6-8 sessions each), all taking place in a single city. Each subsequent part would take place 100 years after the previous one. They would be (mostly) new characters, so it’s sort of an anthology series, but definitely events from one part could influence the next one.

And each part would be played with a new game, as follows:

I. 19th century : Blades in the Dark

II. 20th century: Urban Shadows

III. 21th century: The Veil

IV. 22th century: Apocalypse World

What do you think? Has anyone done a similar thing in terms of fusing PbtA games? Do you have some ideas how I could make some homebrew rules to make the connection tighter? (Players would know the whole plan in advance.)

I MC’d my first session of Urban Shadows yesterday, and I absolutely loved it.

I MC’d my first session of Urban Shadows yesterday, and I absolutely loved it.

My group and I have been playing AW and some hacks for some time now. We used them only because they were rules-light, but never really adopted to the “play to find out” philosophy. Basically, we used moves as skills and all the GMs (we rotate at GMing) prepped their railroady adventures in a traditional way.

When I suggested we try playing the true PbtA way, there was some resistance because “we like it this way” and “I don’t want to read rulebooks”, but everyone accepted in the end.

I was a bit scared to not prep any story, but I trusted the system and everything clicked really good. After the charactrer creation we only had less than two hours to explore the city, but a lot of things happened. The PCs engaged with all four factions and I managed to set cool scenes based on answers I got from the PCs. It all seemed to connect in a more meningful way.

For me, as an MC, it was ten times more fun than GMing a traditional game like D&D!

My players liked it too, and I hope they’ll like it even more when the story heats up. Only one of them seems to be struggling a bit. He tends to choke up when improvising on the spot in a non-mechanical way (meaning: other than using his skills or spells), and it looks like the collaborative storytelling part is putting even more pressure on him than usual. Any ideas how I can help him?

Hi! I’m preparing to run my first US campaign in a few weeks. I have a question about debts and the persuade an NPC move. The rules say that debts are the only way to make someone do something, but then there’s the persuade move. And using a debt gives you +3 on the move, which makes me think that is move is even stronger than just cashing in a debt.

So what’s the difference?

Sorry if I’m missing something obvious but I have a bunch of nitpicky players who will use my confusion if I don’t set clear boundaries on the rules.